It will be either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton — experienced, forward-looking, indomitably determined and eminently sane. Her election alone is what stands between the American nation and the reign of the most unstable, proudly uninformed, psychologically unfit president ever to enter the White House.

On MSNBC earlier today, Al Capp's Daisy Mae of state attorneys general, Arkansas' Leslie Rutledge, went on at some length about what a morally debased man Bill Clinton was in the nineties, and how wife Hillary was even worse (what with her taking exception to the women who had slept with Bill — imagine that).

The anchor interrupted: But what about Trump's and Giuliani's and Gingrich's Bill Clintonlike failings? What about those?

Amusing, still amusing, even after all these months. This morning at 4:49 Central I checked Trump's Twitter feed, and directly landed on this spittle-storm (note its time markings):

This clown has no self-discipline, and I mean no in its most absolute terms. He goes to bed — I presume? — after a day of hearing from politically aware advisers that his "Alicia M" obsession is but another corroded nail in his coffin; he then arises only to triple down. This clown is a swarming nest of over-the-top neuroses; a brooding, emotionally unstable mess of a small man, reveling in his victimization of the powerless. This clown is appallingly disturbed.

Having quoted Freddie Blassie of professional wrestling fame in a recent column critiquing Donald Trump’s debate performance, and having still been accused of elitism, I consider all bets off. So let’s consider William Shakespeare’s view of the 2016 election.

Let's do. And Gerson, for one, has done a splendid job. He concentrates on Julius Caesar, which is hauntingly proleptic:

In the decisive first debate between Brutus and Marc Antony, Brutus employs careful arguments in the expectation that reason will prevail over passion. He is public spirited yet boring. He has an emotional range that reaches from A to B. You make the comparison. Marc Antony, in contrast, is emotive and deceptive. He moves in a cloud of chaos. He promises bread and circuses. He has considerable gaming assets in Pompeii and promises to build a wall across Gaul. You get the picture.

Notes Gerson: "Shakespeare is arguing, according to Allan Bloom, that 'the corruption of the people is the key to the mastery of Rome.'" Gerson meant to write Harold Bloom, although Allan might well have agreed. [Correction: Oh my, that was Harold Bloom quoting Allan Bloom. My sincerest apology, Mr. Gerson.] I'm not aware of any Shakespeare reading list, but as a reasonably well-educated middle-class lad, he had probably read his Aristophanes, who brimmed with contempt at the ease of successful demagoguery (see, e.g., The Knights). Speaking through Antony — who later, in Antony and Cleopatra, observes Bloom, "is hopelessly outclassed by the first imperial bureaucrat," Octavius Caesar, as well as by Cleopatra; so much for the feminist critique of Shakespeare as a misogynist — the Bard revealed an unmistakable dread of The People, the rabble, the Trumpeteers.

They were as John Locke's tabula rosa, on whom any competent firebrand could write whatever he wished. The more simplistic the better. This morning Gerson's Post colleague, Charles Krauthammer, distills Trump's wretched campaign to its knuckledragging essence: "Things are bad and [Clinton's] been around for 30 years. You like bad? Stick with her. You want change? I’m your man." That 40-some-odd percent of the American electorate would embrace both the message's crudeness and the crook hustling it suggests just how close to the lightly scratched surface the people's intellectual corruption is.

The mob's shallowness horrified Shakespeare. Of course there was no little cunning in what he wrote on democracy. He was the ultimate pragmatist who understood that his life lay in the hands of royal, anti-democratic power; he had seen what that power could do — to fellow playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, for instance. Hence taking a fundamentally anti-democratic stance was, for Shakespeare, smart politics of the exceedingly personal. Still, what the play-writing non-elitist wrote on democracy comes through as historical conviction, even though Shakespeare was also the ultimate skeptic (along with Montaigne).

Nonetheless, Shakespeare just as cunningly gigged the dynastic powers that were. "He was," writes Gerson, "consistently drawn to questions about leadership — examining the inner struggles of men (and, here’s to you, Lady Macbeth, women) who seek power, and exploring how that thirst elevates or debases them." In the latter cases, the Bard's high genius — and rudimentary sense of self-preservation — led him away from modernity. He substituted the tawdriness of reigning powers with those of yore: Well, gee, Elizabeth or James, I was writing about the scurrilous Richard III, not you. Through historical example, metaphor and allegory Shakespeare could highlight the baseness, deformities and intrinsic corruption of monarchic power. And even given his self-preserving constraints, he did it like no one else — not then, not before, not since.

The literary critic Bloom doesn't care much for Richard III (he sees too much of Marlowe in it; Shakespeare hadn't yet flowered in his own genius), but it's one of my enduring favorites, especially now. In some ways, Richard was Trump personified: ruthless, possessing a love of power for power's sake, and utterly without principles. Yet in another way Richard was the anti-Trump: he was magnificently self-aware; he knew his insecurities were what led him to thirst for power — and absent that power, his life was worth nothing. This, he eloquently conceded to the audience.

Gerson: Trump is "without eloquence. Thank God for that. And thank Shakespeare for clarifying the democratic threats to democracy."

***

Note: The placing of "Shakespeare" in this post's title was a test to see just how low I can bring my readership numbers. I don't know why I do this to myself, but I do. I wonder if there's some sort of psychiatric therapy that treats chronic readership alienation?

September 29, 2016

There were early efforts to run a more standard form of general election debate-prep camp, led by Roger Ailes, the ousted Fox News chief, at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J. But Mr. Trump found it hard to focus during those meetings.... That left Mr. Ailes, who at the time was deeply distracted by his removal from Fox and the news media reports surrounding it, discussing his own problems as well as recounting political war stories, according to two people present for the sessions.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and a friend of Mr. Trump’s who has been traveling with him extensively, took over much of the preparation efforts by the end.

I like Paul Waldman's take on that second bit of reporting, which appears to be as futuristic as it is retrospective:

If Rudy Giuliani is your main adviser … you've got a problem. Among other things, Giuliani is now offering the brilliant suggestion that Trump attack Clinton by noting that her husband cheated on her. Perhaps that's not surprising coming from Giuliani, who not only quite publicly cheated on his wife when he was mayor of New York but did everything he could to humiliate her in the process, in an episode of uncommon cruelty. Trump himself seems to like the idea; since Monday's debate he has suggested again and again to reporters that while he didn't bring up Monica Lewinsky then, he really wants to. That's going to go over great with women voters.

As profoundly sarcastic as Waldman's point is, in TrumpWorld Hillary's husband's indiscretions are seen as cunningly rational grounds for attacking the spousal victim — which, of course, is a profound irrationality into which the rational mind cannot travel. Bill's extramarital fellatio session not only catapulted Hillary into newfound national popularity and approval, but, shortly thereafter, into a New York Senate seat. Channeling the uncommonly cruel and unquestionably senile Rudy, The Donald now proposes to do Hillary Newt's immense favor all over again.

Let us ponder the splendor of Trump's masculinity. He is hunched and overweight; he has dainty little hands; his lips are avian, of some waterfowl species; his language is pubescent; his hair is baboonish; and he has the unmanly compassion of a cockroach. All told he is, at best, a "3."

George Will's latest is one of those rare must-reads (although I, for one, rarely miss reading George Will). His column is a magnificent display of large thinking, however belated, swallowed by the smallest of visions. With Donald Trump at the GOP's helm, Will's Conservative Project — meant to resign a thousand years — lies in ridicule and ruin, which Will interprets not as the inexorable morbidity of a pseudoconservatism relentlessly hustled by demagogues, but as the triumph of progressivism.

Along with countless other conservative intellectuals, the Washington Post columnist watched in silence as the respectable party of Lincoln succumbed to fringe ravings, from Goldwater to the New Right, from Gingrich to Palinism. Opportunities abounded for Will & Co. to stand athwart the accruing madness and yell Stop — to yell that this, my friends, is not conservatism, but radicalism and reactionaryism, inchoate anarchism and creeping nihilism.

Instead, conservatism's cerebral sufferings — if sufferings they were — were filed under indifference; the party's demagogues were, after all, sticking it to the left, and in that there was an emotional satisfaction for right-wing intellectuals every bit as vulgar as that among the unthinking rabble. George Will let it all go — until the monsters he swaddled created Trump.

What to do? Shame oneself? Point an accusatory finger inward? Confess before the altar of self-honesty that conservative intellectualism nurtured the inevitable monster it now decries? Nay, would it not be more comforting to declare that the triumph of Trumpism is but the enemy's triumph — the triumph of progressivism? Yea, there you go, that's the consoling ticket: "About 90 percent of presidential votes will be cast for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, refuting the theory that this is a center-right country…. [O]n some matters he is to Clinton’s left regarding big government powered by an unbridled presidency."

And so Will returns to his hoary conceit. Conservative intellectualism hasn't let conservatism down; no, Americans have let America down. "A demagogue’s success requires a receptive demos," writes Will, "and Trump’s ascendancy reflects progressivism’s success in changing America’s social norms and national character by de-stigmatizing dependency." That, in Will's unshakable opinion, is the essence of progressivism: an unbridled presidency and mass dependency. Such is Will's familiar elegy to a lost America. In taking on powerful private interests, the Progressive Era's Roosevelt I and Wilson launched the wickedness of useful executive power, followed by Roosevelt II's institutionalization of New Deal "dependency," Johnson's Great Society, and — no chuckling — Obama's healthcare reform. Lost are we Americans who see government as us — as a self-force of society's betterment. Better were the days of unbridled private interests, which brought us the Gilded Age's two nations — one sickeningly wealthy, one sickeningly squalid — and the historical lingerings thereof.

Will concludes with this rhetorical masterpiece of utter blindness: "The beginning of conservative wisdom is recognition that there is an end to everything: Nothing lasts. If Trump wins, the GOP ends as a vehicle for conservatism." See paragraph 3, above, the sordid contours of which Will either missed, or dismissed, entirely. The authentic beginning of conservative wisdom lay mostly in leftist critiques of a visibly transmogrifying conservatism, from Goldwater on — which even Goldwater came to regret: "Perhaps I'm one of the reasons this place [Washington, D.C.] is so redneck," he groaned years after his presidential run of pseudoconservative thunder, still reverberating. Indeed, in Donald Trump, it has come to a devastating climax. Pure opportunism and the seediest of demagoguery have replaced conservative principles.

Will's concluding thoughts also include this: "Conservatism’s recovery from [Trump's] piratical capture of the conservative party will require facing unflattering facts about a country that currently is indifferent to its founding." There is of course some philosophically conservative merit to that statement. What it omits is that conservative intellectuals must first face unflattering facts as to their indifferent enabling of conservatism's wholesale degeneration.

From a New York Times article on how suburban women reacted to Donald Trump’s debate performance:

"Not everyone thought Mr. Trump appeared unprepared for the White House. Barb Haag of West Chester, a retired teacher of the emotionally disturbed, said Mr. Trump’s interruptions did not bother her. 'Kids interrupt you all the time if they have a point to make,'” she said.

An adviser to Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a new explanation for why a portrait of Trump — paid for by the Republican nominee's charitable foundation — wound up on display at a Trump-owned golf resort in Florida.

Trump, the adviser said, was actually doing his charity a favor, by "storing" its painting on the wall of a bar at Trump National Doral, outside Miami.

"There are IRS rules which specifically state that when a foundation has an item, an individual can store those items — on behalf of the foundation — in order to help it with storage costs," Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn said on MSNBC….

Tax experts were not impressed by this reasoning.

"It's hard to make an IRS auditor laugh," Brett Kappel, a lawyer who advises nonprofit groups at the Akerman firm, said in an email. "But this would do it."

In a NYT op-ed, the libertarian candidate conveys a sense of personal oppression which he hopes you share. Woe is Gary Johnson, for this third-party candidate sees that "our two-party political system" is keeping us all down. Our concomitant, dug-in encumbrance of "hyper-partisanship may be entertaining," he writes, "but it’s a terrible way to try to run a country." We are in reality a nation united by common visions, he continues, which transcend the tawdriness of "red versus blue." In a striking passage of unprecedented courage, Johnson urges that we "find common ground." Rather tragically, however, he then proposes his ticket's principles, which visit upon us nothing but more red versus blue — much of it fraught with little but crackpot ideas.

A Johnson administration "would begin the conversation about the size of government by submitting a real balanced budget." That, my oppressed friends, is the Holy Grail of crackpotted fiscal conservatism. There's not a policy conjurer outside the walls of Bedlam who would propose the fiscally unhinged idea of crashing the nation's economy via an arbitrarily imposed balanced budget. This is the shallowest, reddest, most demagogic and most fiscally unconservative overture in all of Policy Crackpotteddom. Hence crackpots such as Rep. Louie Gohmert habitually propose it.

Johnson goes on: "Cuts of up to 20 percent or more would be on the table for all programs, including military spending. Changes to Social Security and Medicare must also be considered." Changes — a gentle euphemism for libertarianism's cruel obliteration. Johnson would take the nation's most effective anti-poverty programs for the elderly and throw both to the wolves, thereby reimposing draconian financial burdens on the children and grandchildren of the older poor — more youthful money otherwise spent in, say, the housing or automobile industry, which goes to employ millions of others. Obliterating Social Security and Medicare: yet another deep crimson and deeply divisive proposal, the very type of which Johnson promises to free us. Meanwhile, though slashing military spending by one-fifth or more would make the bluest of Progressive Caucusers' day, those in congressional districts with military contractors — which is just about all of them — would merely laugh President Johnson's proposal out of both houses.

The libertarian writes that he wishes to reform "our criminal justice and sentencing systems." Who doesn't these days? Just how is his libertarian view unique? Here, the chasm betwixt red and blue has already been overcome. He also writes that "In the difficult case of abortion, I support a woman’s right to choose." Ah, now we're back to blue versus red. Johnson seems to believe that in calling his support of abortion rights "libertarian" rather than Democratic, the dividing line between blue and red is somehow erased. This, of course, is folly. Johnson is taking a partisan as well as philosophical stand, as any Democrat or Republican would.

He also reminds us that he has "long supported civil liberties, including marriage equality and freedom from mass surveillance." Blue versus red, although there is considerable purple on mass surveillance. He laments the two-party system's failure to "fix the dysfunctional immigration system." Again, blue versus red, and again, Johnson sides with the blue. He is particularly distressed that "President George W. Bush nearly doubled our national debt, to $10 trillion from $5.7 trillion," while "President Obama is on track to double it again." Here is perhaps the most chronic division between red and blue — the former's madcap insistence that gutting federal revenue will somehow replenish government's coffers. And here, Johnson lands decisively across the red line.

He would "limit military intervention to when our nation is attacked." On the other hand "We would honor all treaty obligations," which would unlimit the prospect of military interventions. Johnson would also "pursue strategic alliances that made our country safer," which is the fundamental principle of liberal internationalism.

All of which, says Johnson, presents him as leader of the "party that can break the partisan gridlock which for too long has kept real solutions out of reach." This is a worthy aspiration. And yet in his rhetorically unifying effulgence, Johnson lacks any plan to achieve it. On examination what he offers is merely more red versus blue — indeed an even more divisive brand of red versus blue — which he attempts to conceal merely by disowning either partisan label within the two-party system. It's a shell game.

September 27, 2016

Clinton bested Trump in the first presidential debate according to a variety of metrics, and the odds are that she’ll gain in head-to-head polls over Trump in the coming days…. As a warning, you should give the debate five to seven days to be fully reflected in FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts.

I feel rather sorry for Silver. I have seen his statistical gloominess of late take some hits from liberal writers, which is unfair. Silver practices "data journalism" — that is, by definition, journalism constrained by the data. However it's not the hits that he's taken — however unfair they might be — that causes me to feel sorry for him; it is, rather, the form of journalism he practices. From it are sucked intuition and political instincts and imminent permutations that are either unquantifiable or yet too immature to be quantified. And what is political journalism absent intuition, instinct, informed anticipation and historical light thrown on all of it?

A few weeks ago I cited the late, great, cultural critic Dwight Macdonald, and today I'll cite him again, this time from his 1957 essay, "The Triumph of the Fact." Writing about Time as a stand-in for all fact-obsessed journalism, Macdonald referenced the magazine's "huge and expensive research department [that] produces a weekly warehouseful of certified, pasteurized, 100 per cent double-checked Facts, and everything is accurate about any given article except its main points." That is often what strikes me about what Silver is self-required to write: dead and dry facts, bled entirely of their larger circumstances and instinctual anticipations. Were I deprived of the latter, I'd reject political writing. To me it's an art, not a science.

Trump said Tuesday on "Fox and Friends" that [his mic] was going on and off and that his volume was lower than Hillary Clinton’s microphone.

Trump tells Fox News he wonders "whether that wasn’t set up that way on purpose." He says "I don’t want to believe in conspiracy theories, but it was much lower than hers."

(Nearly as funny is that "Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN that she heard from audience members that his mic sounded off," but "from where she sat backstage, the mic sounded fine." Conway is hoping to flee her present disaster of a campaign with some human decency intact. I don't know why. She works in Republican politics.)

Rudy Giuliani floated the prospect of Trump not participating in further general election debates, after what he believes was inappropriate meddling Monday by moderator Lester Holt.

We need not ask what it is about simple truth and straightforward reality that so upsets the bowel movement of modern conservatism. The latter is steadfastly appalled by the dual former. Mr. Holt merely pointed out that Trump indeed supported the Iraq war, and that stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional. Nothing more. His were minimal requirements of any competent, responsible moderator. And yet Giuliani deemed them "ignorant fact check[s]."

Giuliani may be correct about those future debates, however. Trump's participation in them might well take him below 40 percent.

So far, the reviews have been favorable for Clinton — more favorable than I thought they'd be.

My written assessment last night essentially dovetailed with Steve Schmidt's. On MSNBC, the former McCain aide gave the first 20 minutes or so to Trump, for he had the easier job of attacking that tired old bogeyman: the domestic status quo. The electorate has been brainwashed by pseudoconservative messaging that the American economy is wasting away in near-Great Depression territory, and all Trump needed to do was hammer away at this preconception. That he did, especially on that biggest of bogeymen, trade. But then the issue of birtherism was revived and Trump looked the lying fool that he is. Even worse, the discussion turned to foreign affairs — and Trump went kaboom. Perhaps his most mind-boggling as well as horrifying incoherence came when he coupled these two statements: "I would certainly not do [a nuclear] first strike"; on the other hand, "I can't take anything off the table."

So Trump was in character throughout: an utter buffoon. Still, I wanted to assess his performance as a non-political junkie might. And there, last night, I believed Trump's anti-trade demagoguery and magic job-creation formula would eclipse his staggering ignorance of foreign affairs. I must say that I've never been so happy to confess a cynical misunderestimation of the American electorate at large. A PPP poll gave the debate to Clinton, 51-40. Ninety percent — 18 out of 20 — of a CNN Florida focus group also gave Clinton the win. And Vox reports that "a focus group of Pennsylvania voters by GOP pollster Frank Luntz overwhelmingly thought Clinton had won." (A CNN poll showing that Clinton won 62-27 should be dismissed as laughable. Somewhat red-faced, the network's political analyst David Chalian admitted on-air before releasing the results that Democrats were vastly overpolled — 40-some-odd percent were Dems and only 20-some-odd percent were Republicans — which means that PPP's more subdued results are also more accurate. Nonetheless, the aggressive imbalance of CNN's results strongly suggests that undecided independents overwhelmingly favored Clinton, which accords with the two focus-group outcomes.)

Not to make too much of them, but the most intriguing aspect of PPP's results is the suggestive exactness of them, which is to say, the results reflect precisely what one might expect to see on the night of 8 November: A 51 percent Clinton victory, with Trump stuck at 40. True, that is optimistic. And yet for all of Democrats' all-too characteristic wailing about Clinton's recent slippage, the fundamentals of this election have not changed in months. Clinton possesses a winning coalition, Trump does not; notwithstanding national polling fluctuations, Clinton has rather consistently led Trump by roughly 5 points; and, above all, Trump continues to make an ass of himself.

And so I'll reverse my original assessment of last night — wrongly imbued as it was, I shall again confess, with disgust at the "middle" American electorate's gullible attraction to shiny objects — and declare it a splendid night for Hillary Clinton. On CNN's post-debate panel — which I watched after penning my initial assessment — the Trump camp was clearly on the defensive, with Dem partisans and straight journalists alike ripping into Trump's performance. This was key, since for the next several days it will help to mold still-unformed opinion among undecideds. And in the press this morning, some conservatives either soft on or hostile to Trump are bowing to Clinton's superior performance, rather than merely trashing Trump. Republican strategist Ed Rogers: "The bottom line: I call this debate marginally for Hillary." The American Enterprise Institute's Arthur Brooks: "Most people will say Mrs. Clinton got the better of these exchanges and had a good night." Other conservatives are more Trump-centric in their appraisals. Ross Douthat: "Donald Trump won the first 25 minutes of the first presidential debate…. [H]e seized on an issue, trade, where Hillary Clinton was awkward and defensive, and he hammered away at his strongest campaign theme: linking his opponent to every establishment failure and disappointment, and trying to make her experience a liability rather than a strength…. But then the rest of the debate happened…." And former W. speechwriter Peter Wehner: "What a fantastic moment, to see Donald Trump self-destruct in order to try to defend his lie that he opposed the Iraq war before it began…. For Trump to then follow up his tirade by insisting that he has the right temperament to be president shows you how unbalanced he is. The unmasking continues."

In short, the media's post-debate assessments are and will continue to be more important in calling the debate than the debate was itself. A "narrative" is being established, and it ain't a good one for Trump. What's more, undecideds seemed to independently assess Trump negatively — and that, I'd say, was the real shock of the evening.

September 26, 2016

One thing is clear. Trump crammed for this debate. He honed every "commonsense" bit of sloganeering he could think of and consequently performed better, from a populist point of view, than I expected — and that, given his grading curve, is probably not good for Clinton. Holt provided virtually no fact-checking and so Clinton was left to play offense through defense. Holt did push back on Trump's denial of having supported the Iraq war, and that, at least, is likely to dominate the media's video-looping tomorrow. In short, Trump made an ass of himself, which is an easy job. On national security and foreign policy in general, Trump made it profoundly clear that he hasn't the vaguest idea of what he's talking about. Unfortunately, American voters are more captivated by domestic economic demagoguery than they are turned off by foreign policy ignorance. But even here he was allowed to demagogue with abandon, especially on the Iran nuclear deal. Again, though — and this is critical — how this debate polls will depend almost entirely on whatever soundbites the television networks choose to loop.

***

Has Trump been sniffing cocaine? Jesus he's about to inhale the mic.

***

Trump's birther defense is sickening beyond description.

***

By throwing around slogans such as "law and order" and "stop and frisk" Trump is only cementing his non-college white vote and Clinton's African-American vote. So far they're both aiming at their base rather than independent undecideds, which confirms that they both believe this is a base election.

***

A superb hit by Clinton on Trump's "stiffing" of suppliers, workers, contractors, etc.

***

Trump is under perpetual audit and he'll release his returns once he's not under audit. Go figure.

***

Trump is getting nasty much earlier than anyone expected. Is this the gentlemanly Trump we were promised? It's only :23 after and he's already blurted "Excuse me" twice and he has repeatedly interrupted Clinton. By debate's end he should be sputtering.

***

Trump began sweating at :16 after with Hillary's mention of his exploitation of the housing collapse. "That's called business." (And that off-the-cuff comment is called stupid.)

***

Now that was just goddamn brilliant of you, Donald. How will you bring jobs back into the United States? You won't let them leave.

David Fahrenthold's latest shows that Trump is likely a criminal tax-evader as well as a self-dealer:

Donald Trump’s charitable foundation has received approximately $2.3 million from companies that owed money to Trump or one of his businesses but were instructed to pay Trump’s tax-exempt foundation instead, according to people familiar with the transactions.

In cases where he diverted his own income to his foundation, tax experts said, Trump would still likely be required to pay taxes on the income. Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns….

The laws governing the diversion of income into a foundation were written, in part, to stop charity leaders from funneling income that should be taxed into a charity and then using that money to benefit themselves. Such violations can bring monetary penalties, the loss of tax-exempt status, and even criminal charges in extreme cases.

This race is being covered in a way that suggests it’s a dead heat. And it’s not. She’s got a small national poll lead. But more importantly, she’s got a decisive electoral college lead….

The Clinton campaign is doing large samples for modeling surveys of everybody on the voter file. So you have a very good understanding of how you believe 100 percent of the electorate will be allocated on election day. When you look at how 100 percent of the vote is likely to be allocated in Florida, I get very optimistic…. I can get Donald Trump to within two or three in Pennsylvania, but I can’t get him to a win number. The same is true in Virginia and Colorado. I know everybody goes crazy about the latest Cheetos poll, but I feel very confident about both New Hampshire and Florida. So that puts her over 300 [in the electoral college]. Trump has to pull off a miracle in the electoral college.

Plouffe adds that in tonight's debate:

[Trump will] be graded by the figure skating judges on a lower bar. But the American people have a higher bar.

Not that it makes much practical difference — given, that is, Clinton's easy path to 270 — but I do hope that Plouffe's second assessment is as valid as his first. There is nothing more spiritually depressing than watching my fellow citizens, every four years, lower the bar a bit more. From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush and now to Donald Trump, the bar has been lowered to the point that a reasonably healthy cockroach could hurdle it without scraping its belly. In fact in national polling, a cockroach is doing that now. And again, that is just goddamn depressing.